The Seduction of the Accomplice
by MithLuin
Summary: Why would anyone join forces with a serial killer who was the last in a long line of cannibalistic murderers specializing in knocking off members of secret societies and building skeletons out of their body parts? Spoilers for Season 3.
1. An Innocuous Beginning

The Seduction of the Accomplice

Chapter 1: An Innocuous Beginning

"_A wolf often lies concealed in the skin of a lamb."_

Zack stood awkwardly near the table of snacks. He didn't like this part, but you were supposed to stay. He usually didn't talk to people when neither Hodgins nor Dr. Brennan was with him. Dr. Brennan seldom went to talks like this anymore; she didn't have time. She only came if she were giving a talk herself. Besides, this one was outside her field. And Hodgins claimed not to be interested. So, he had come alone. The talk was interesting enough. He certainly didn't regret coming; it was just now that he wished he were back at the Jeffersonian.

"He droned on and on, didn't he?" a stranger said. "At least the snacks are good; I was almost nodding off at the end there." Someone had walked up to him and started a conversation. The man was younger than he was, though he looked older than Zack; probably a grad student. He was holding a small paper plate of snacks and a plastic cup.

"If you were only interested in the snacks, why come to the talk at all?" Zack asked, honestly curious.

The guy gave him a strange look, and then walked away. So, probably not what he should have said. But it was a valid question: why come to a talk if you weren't interested in it? He'd already stopped the speaker and questioned him on the efficacy of dwelling on funding (or lack thereof) in such a morbid manner. The man had not taken him seriously, unfortunately, so he probably wouldn't even realize that by bemoaning the lack of attention being devoted to the research he was actually taking attention away from the research that was being done. Zack found that ironic.

"So, what is your interest in nuclear power?" Another stranger. Usually not so many people spoke to him. Maybe he was standing too close to the food.

"Strictly academic. My work does not extend to alternative fuel research, poorly funded or otherwise." It would never have occurred to him to ask the stranger the same question. He stared at the man's shirt; no tie.

"What work do you do?" the man continued.

"I'm a forensic anthropologist, so the only reactions I get to do are chemical, in the context of recreating a murder scenario. I keep up with developments in nuclear fusion because of my other doctorate." It didn't feel like bragging in this academic context, but then, he had never understood why people accused him of that when he was merely stating his credentials.

"Oh? And what is that in?"

"Applied Engineering." There, he hadn't mentioned his thesis. Practicing restraint was supposed to be a good thing.

"I must admit, I find forensic anthropology more interesting than burning plasma diagnostics myself."

"It is. I get to work on current murder cases, and identify remains that are thousands of years old. Nothing theoretical about that."

"Really?"

"Yes. The bones of the human skeleton can tell you an incredible amount about how a person lived and died, and the hypotheses can be checked not just by simulations or replicas, but by direct comparison to the actual bone." Zack paused and looked at the man's face for the first time. "Why are you still here? Usually people have walked away by now." He only got to talk about his work…at work.

"You were discussing skeletons; while only a layman, I find such study very interesting."

Zack left the talk pleased with himself. He'd carried out a sustained conversation with a stranger, and apparently described his work in such a way that a layman could understand. Dr. Saroyan was always pestering him to do that in preparation for presenting evidence at trial. The man had even asked him for his e-mail address; he might speak to him again. He would tell Hodgins about the talk when he got back to the Jeffersonian; he was pretty sure his friend did have some interest in nuclear fusion, even though he'd denied it earlier.

* * *

_Author's Note: I am a huge fan of Zack, and I have a lot of trouble trying to believe he did what the writers of the show said he did. This story, however, does not attempt to exonerate him. It offers an explanation (as close to canon as possible) on how Zack could have possibly fallen for something like this. *PLEASE* let me know if he seems out of character at any point. This story will be painful, though, so you have been warned. Don't keep reading if you don't want to see him fall...it's going to be like a train wreck. _


	2. Baby Steps

Chapter 2: Baby Steps

"_It is the first step that is troublesome." _

It was only two days later when Zack got an email. It wasn't signed, and for the first time he realized that he did not know the man's name. He had forgotten to ask. He must have given his own name when he wrote down his official e-mail address for the Jeffersonian. But the anonymous gmail account didn't help him with a name. It would be a week before he would translate the Greek word for bastard, and nearly a month before he would try to trace the IP address and discover the man was using a computer at a public library. For now, he simply answered it: "I don't drink coffee."

That Saturday, Zack found himself eating lunch at a sandwich shop. Two more e-mails had clarified that meeting, not coffee, was the purpose of the original inquiry. He had never been here before, but the bus had gotten him there easily enough. He preferred the Metro to the bus, if he had to use public transportation, but he supposed he couldn't be too choosy. It was getting chilly outside, but if he walked briskly, the cold didn't bother him. People in DC complained about the weather getting cold at much higher temperatures than the people in Michigan did, he'd found. 'Cold' was an imprecise and relative term, but despite that, commonly used.

The sandwich shop was warm, though, so he'd taken off his jacket and looked out at the sunny fall day. He ordered the same meal he always requested at the diner, for comparison purposes.

"Which bones are the most useful?"

"That depends on the skeleton, how the person died. All bones are useful, but they each tell you different things." Zack was good at doing two things at once, but talking and eating was not a good combination. He hesitated for a moment, then plunged ahead. "A missing skull or pelvic bone will make identification more difficult, but if the person were stabbed or shot in the torso, we would need the ribs or sternum to determine the blade or caliber of bullet used." He gestured towards those bones on his own body to demonstrate; it was inconvenient not having a skeleton to refer to. "Without femurs, it can be problematic to estimate height, which can lead to delays in identifying the decedent, especially if the teeth are compromised. The vertebrae and hyoid are always worth checking if suspicious circumstances surrounded the death. But every bone can tell you something; I've worked with as little as a single phalanx, carpal or patella." He was dumbing it down as much as he could; he just pretended he was talking to Angela.

"Fascinating. What could you tell from that?"

"In one case, age of bone, age and diseases of victim, source of mark on the bone."

"That's not enough to go off of, is it?"

"In the case of the finger bone it was, but not usually enough to make a positive ID, no." It was an effort not to say _proximal phalanx. _For some reason, his nieces always found the word _phalanges _amusing, so he assumed normal people didn't use it.

Zack stopped talking abruptly and focused on his lunch, which he'd been neglecting. The man from the conference was a very attentive listener. He did best in conversations with only one other person, because then he did not get confused about who was addressing whom. The food was passable; not as good as the diner, though. It was better than what he would have made for himself, he reflected, so not a total disappointment.

"What drew you to this line of work? Surely with your other interests you could have done something else. Something more…profitable."

"The Jeffersonian is a prestigious institution. I am well compensated for my work."

"Oh. So you just do it for the money?" The man sounded disappointed. Zack wasn't sure why that would matter to him.

"No. I do it because I want to do it. I…enjoy it. We solve puzzles. We catch bad guys."

"So, your work prevents bad things from happening?"

Zack shook his head. "We apprehend the criminal after the fact. If a crime has not been committed, we have no evidence to gather. In theory, we prevent another similar crime from occurring."

"Why do you say, 'in theory?'"

"It is possible that person had no intention or inclination to kill anyone else. We can punish them for the crime they did commit, but we can't be sure we have prevented another crime from occurring. And even in the case of serial murderers…"

"You work on serial killer cases?"

"I have, yes. One, we never caught, but there is a good chance he will kill again. Technically, he has only killed three people, but he has other counts of attempted murder and kidnapping. Another…is dead now, but our involvement in the case did not prevent any deaths. In fact…we allowed him to live longer, and caused even more deaths. Indirectly."

"Who was that?"

"Howard Epps. I can speak of him because the case is closed. He was clever, but he's dead now. In other cases, the jury makes the wrong decision at the trial."

Zack was clearly agitated, because he was speaking rapidly. He took a sip (or rather, a gulp) of his drink.

"So by trying to catch Howard Epps, you helped him to kill innocent people?"

Zack nodded, miserable. "I even got blown up, which wasn't as bad as I would have thought. But we catch bad guys. It's what we do. I cannot know what they will do in the future; I only can find out what they have done in the past. Epps _shouldn't _have been able to kill from death row." He was repeating himself; his listener knew he was not convinced of what he was saying so insistently.

"And yet he did. If there were a way of stopping them before the damage was done, would that be worth pursuing?"

Zack nodded eagerly, but just looked at the man expectantly. When he said nothing, Zack looked away. "But there is no way of knowing who will become a killer and who will not. Certainty only applies to the past, not the future. Even a sociopath like Epps had a last victim; they all do."

"Perhaps." The man did not say anything further, and Zack just looked at him, puzzled. He was not comfortable with conjecture. The only way to apply certainty to the future would be...the laws of physics. Something incontrovertible. A specific event had too many variables. Maybe, if you accounted for them all...but that was particularly tricky. That was why weather reports were so often wrong.

* * *

_Author's Note: Still with me? Zack references several cases from seasons 1 and 2; too many to list. This is the fall of episode three, so just before "Mummy in the Maze" most likely. Coming up next is a flashback._


	3. Vulnerable

Chapter 3: Vulnerable

"_Every man is his own worst enemy." _

There was not another e-mail from the man. Zack was disappointed. He thought…he thought he had made a new friend, someone outside the lab who was interested in him. That would have been an accomplishment, something to be proud of…. But no new e-mail awaited him on Monday. He checked all week, and still, nothing. He considered going to the sandwich shop alone, just in case, but in the end decided the food was not worth it. The last time he had been this disappointed was when...when he'd been sent home.

_

* * *

_

"Do you know why you're here?" The man looked tired. They all did.

"Yes, sir. I identify remains that are too badly damaged to be recognized by next of kin."

"No, not here in Iraq. Here talking to me. Do you know why you are here?"

"No, sir. I thought you would tell me."

"I've had another complaint." He picked up some papers from the table. _"Doctor Addy refused to look at the amputee." _He put down that paper, and read off the next one. _"Dr. Addy ignored the questions we asked him." _That paper was added to the stack. _"Dr. Addy did not release the remains at the appointed time, but insisted on retaining them another day."_ Yet another. _"Dr. Addy does not respond, even when given a direct order." _

He looked back at Zack. "I get more of these every week. They're not going away. You're not learning. I'm told you're here because you want to be here. Is that true?"

"No, sir, I'm here because you called for me."

"Not here talking to me, here in Iraq! That's exactly what I mean." He jabbed a finger in the direction of Zack's chest, but he didn't touch him. "If you wanted to be here, you damn well should have made some effort to adjust to conditions here. But as far as I can tell, you think you're still in that lab of yours back in the US. You need to get your head out of your ass and look around. Do you see where you are?"

"I'm in Iraq and I'm talking to you, sir." Zack hoped they weren't going to define the word 'here' again; he had no idea which answer was right – it kept changing. And he had been making an effort; he used 'sir' when he was supposed to, and worked very hard….

"Yes, you're in Iraq. A war zone. Things are different here. You can't stick to your narrow job description and turn up your nose at what you are asked to do."

"The amputee was…_alive._ I only do dead people. I'm not that kind of doctor."

"You do bones. According to this, we wanted to know what he was hit with. No one was asking you to stitch him up or change his bandages. Just look at the damage like you do on the corpses."

"But, sir. He was alive. He was…_screaming_." Zack looked at him earnestly, willing him to understand. He didn't know how to express himself any more clearly.

"What are you, twelve? You may look like a baby, but you've got six years on some of the men going out on patrols. They come to see me when they shoot someone, and I send them right back out. You aren't the young one here, you aren't the baby, and you sure as hell don't have the raw end of any deal. If you're going to be a man, then you have to buckle down and deal with all the shit just like everyone else. You can't come in here and tell me you can't listen to a man scream. He can damn well scream if he wants to. You would, if it were your leg blown off." He looked at Zack for a reaction, but got none; mouth hanging slightly open didn't count.

He rubbed his forehead with his hand. Zack knew this could either be a sign of fatigue or displeasure. Maybe both? This man used lots of words, like Agent Booth, but not precisely, so it was hard to figure out what he meant. Zack knew he was educated, but it was hard to remember that sometimes.

"If it were just that, we could discuss this. You're a professional, and you can learn, in theory. But you keep screwing up. You aren't being a help here. I'm sure you're very good at what you do, but if you can't work with us, you're useless to us. This is a _team, _and if you're going to work with the military, you have to take a team approach. We don't have room for mavericks or loners. When we say we need the remains, it means we need to return them to the Iraqi families for burials - _right away_. Do you have any idea what it means to them to have bodies laying out, unburied? It eats away at them." Zack pictured maggots eating at an abdominal wound, and tried to figure out how that related to not getting buried. It was true that maggots would only be present if the flies had been able to lay their eggs, so it would make sense that there would be more if the body were out in the open...but that was more Hodgins' territory. "Makes them unhappy, makes them not so pleased with all we're trying to do here," the man continued, explaining. "Makes them lob grenades into barracks. Am I getting through to you at all?" Zack realized that 'them' referred to next of kin, not the bodies.

"I understand your concern. But if I don't have an answer, I can't write my report. I can't find the answers without the bodies. I don't _mean_ to keep them; I work as fast as I can." What they were asking him to do was impossible; didn't they see that? It was very hot and the nights were noisy. He wasn't getting very much sleep as it was, and he couldn't afford to get any less. But he couldn't do shoddy work, either. That wasn't an option. And it took time to find out every detail about how a person died. Not all of them presented with a fatal wound from a bullet; some of them had been merely injured and buried alive in shallow graves. Didn't the families want to know that?

"And you get away with this insubordination back where you come from? You don't have to take orders from a boss who says _now_ and means it?"

"Dr. Brennan understands my work. She taught me how to do it. We work very well together. She wouldn't want me to reach a conclusion without carefully analyzing all the evidence."

"And no one else has ever complained? No one else has ever told you that you are lousy at adapting?" Ah, there it was.

"Everyone except my mother says that," Zack replied immediately, though technically, it wasn't true; people worded it in different ways. Adapting was a goal that had eluded Zack for most of his life. He was often surprised at how quickly people figured out he couldn't do that. "But it is not a problem at the Jeffersonian."

"Well, you might want to think about why it is that you can fit in so well there, but the rest of the world doesn't know what to make of you."

"Make what of me?"

"I mean, that this is not the first time you've failed to assimilate, and you might want to figure out why that is, because otherwise, you are going to fail everywhere you go that is not the Jeffersonian. That is what I am saying. Do you understand now, Dr. Addy?"

"Yes, sir." Though to be fair, he had understood that from a long time before now. What to do about it was what he couldn't figure out.

"Pack your things."

"Sir?"

"You're going home."

_

* * *

_

What had he done wrong? Why didn't the man send him another e-mail? Hodgins had told him to pay attention to the other guy. Of course, he had followed up this advice with an injunction _not_ to pay attention to the other guy, so Zack wasn't entirely sure how to take that. It seemed Hodgins didn't appreciate his observations, but wanted him to respond in some other way. As he thought back over their conversations, at the conference and the lunch, he realized he'd done most of the talking. Maybe he should have tried to listen more? But it was so hard to stop talking once someone got him started, and this new person always seemed so interested. He could listen while someone else spoke, he supposed, but he was bad at coming up with questions in a social situation. He never knew what to ask, and when he _did_ ask a question, most normal people deemed it inappropriate. Hodgins would hit him in those cases, to let him know. He wasn't sure this man would do that.

It finally occurred to him that he could send an e-mail himself. But what to say?

_Would you like to meet again? I won't talk as much this time. I'm not very good at asking questions, at least, asking appropriate questions, so you'll have to let me know if I say something wrong. I'd prefer if you not hit me. The sandwich shop is passable. There's another place I go to all the time – the Royal Diner. Let me know if you would like to meet there. On Sunday? _

He read it over again. It seemed clear to him. If this didn't work, he would ask Angela what to do. But using resources available to him at the Jeffersonian to initiate or maintain friendships outside the lab would mean that he had failed to assimilate. Again.

* * *

_Author's Note: I by no means intend to impugn Army psychologists. I do not know any personally, but assume they are much less gruff than the man I've depicted here. Even Patton got in trouble for telling a guy who was shell-shocked to pull himself together and get back out there, and that was during WWII. The only detail that is accurate is that men involved in a shooting are required to talk to either the psychologist or the chaplain afterwards, just like the FBI requires Booth to see someone after discharging his weapon. _


	4. Building a Wall, Brick by Brick

Chapter 4: Building a Wall, Brick by Brick

_"A collector of mummies will be one." _

The man had insisted on the same sandwich shop as before. Zack got there first, and sat by the window, waiting for him. He didn't look at the menu; he just waited. He felt rather lost and adrift being here alone. He always looked at sunlight through glass, so that part was familiar. But usually he didn't have to qualify the weather to himself while doing so. It was very important when engaging in casual conversation with strangers to be prepared to say something about the weather. In Iraq, it was always hot. He did not understand why people felt the need to remark upon something that never changed, but if he pointed it out to them, it didn't go over well. So, he came up with something to say about the weather, if he had to.

But the other man showed up, and Zack smiled, and he smiled back, and that was when Zack noticed that he'd filed his upper canines. At least they looked unnaturally pointy to him, though perhaps it was within the parameters of genetic variation. He'd have to measure to be sure, look for tool marks. Sometimes people with gum disease appeared to have longer teeth. Puzzled, he looked at the menu now, completely forgetting to comment on the weather. He'd order something different this time, so he wouldn't have to compare it to the diner.

"How have you been?" the man asked.

And Zack told him. He was such a good listener. Zack missed not having anyone to share what happened at work with. When he thought about who he'd usually tell these stories to, he realized it was Hodgins. But this man was not like Hodgins. He wouldn't understand things the way Hodgins did. It was strange to miss Hodgins when he worked with him all the time; Zack wondered why that was. When he'd suggested moving out, Hodgins had tried to talk him out of it. They were best friends.

But their food was ready, and Zack remembered that he'd promised not to talk so much. What was he supposed to say, though? "What is your name?" he asked abruptly.

"You can call me Nothos," the man replied.

"Are you illegitimate?"

"You were not kidding about the inappropriate questions," the man said in mild surprise.

"I looked it up," Zack informed him. "It's the Greek word for bastard, or a child who could not inherit under Athenian law. I shouldn't call you that if it's not true," he insisted.

"It's fine for now. Maybe later, I'll give you another name to call me."

"Okay," Zack agreed. It was like Captain Nemo. His meal tasted better this time.

"I'm more surprised you had to look it up; you don't strike me as someone who needs to do that very often."

"I've studied Latin and German, but not Greek. Language isn't really my specialty."

"Tell me about catching the bad guys," Nothos insisted, and Zack fell into talking once again. At least he'd tried to pay attention to the other guy.

He enjoyed recounting things in his own way. At work, he was almost always cut off if he allowed himself too much leeway. But here... "A pitchfork. The murder weapon was a pitchfork. I didn't recognize it at first, because during the process of decomposition the ribcage had shifted. It was difficult to see how the marks from the tines all lined up. I found it very frustrating, but once I finally identified it, it was not hard to locate the weapon, the crime scene and the killer." Zack was proud of his work. He was allowed to discuss it so long as he didn't use names or reveal anything too technical.

"And who was the murderer?"

Zack's face clouded. "He was young. He assisted his ex-girlfriend by hiding a body, but then the father of the dead girl came after him. So, he killed him. He claimed it was an accident, but I don't think it is possible to stab someone in the chest with that much force by accident. It will not go well for him at his trial."

"Is he one of the ones you don't think would have murdered again?"

Zack shook his head. "I don't like to speculate. He certainly is capable of killing a man, because he's done it before. But whether or not he would do so again if we had not caught him? I don't know. It is possible."

"And you. Are you capable of killing a man?"

"I haven't done it before," Zack said quickly. "Why would you think I had?"

"No, I didn't think that." Nothos was smiling at him, the way people did when he missed something obvious and they found it amusing. Unfortunately, knowing that never helped him to identify what he had missed. It did give him an opportunity to observe the canines again, though. The gums looked healthy. "Why does it upset you to talk about murderers?" Nothos continued, changing tack. "You seem so comfortable discussing bones and marks left by weapons."

"I don't deal well with…people. Living ones, I mean. I am strictly a bone person. People confuse me."

"So you don't understand why it is that people would kill?"

Zack should his head. "I don't do motive. I just learn everything there is to learn about the evidence."

"Then we make a good pair; I study people."

Zack took that as an indication of camaraderie, so he smiled.

"I would prefer if you keep our friendship secret. I am a very private person, as you might have gathered," Nothos continued.

Zack looked confused. "What do you mean by private?" Secretly, he was pleased to hear the word 'friend.'

"I just mean that I don't like for other people to know my business or whereabouts."

Zack nodded in understanding. "That is why you will not tell me your name. You're paranoid, like Hodgins."

"I don't think that _paranoid_…"

Zack corrected himself hastily. "Right, people don't like to be called 'paranoid.' I apologize if I offended you. I will say 'private' in the future."

"So you will keep our meetings private?"

Zack nodded. "As long as no one asks me about you, I have no reason to discuss what we say here."

Nothos gave him a sharp look. "That's not what keeping things private means. Private means you don't tell, regardless of what you are asked."

"You're asking me to...be dishonest?" Zack asked in surprise. "Why would I do that?"

"No, no, not lie. Merely state the truth in such a way that I am not mentioned. Be discrete."

Zack's face cleared. "You mean I should be misleading. Dr. Saroyan assured me that presenting the truth in a way that was meant to mislead was not the same thing as lying. I cannot take responsibility for someone else's misunderstanding; it's their fault for making assumptions and failing to ask for clarification. I can't say I like it, but I suppose I can keep silent."

"That's all I'm asking. You may talk about yourself, just don't mention me."

"That should not be difficult. People seldom ask me about what I do when I am not at the lab. Except my mother. She calls me every week and asks about my work as well as what I do to occupy my free time."

"Did you tell her about me?"

"Yes. I said I met a man at a conference and ate lunch with him. I remarked that you were not disturbed by discussing human remains while eating, which I find is unusual among most people who do not work in my field. I have been told nurses are also like that. Are you a nurse?"

Nothos shook his head impatiently. "Can you tell her that you did not see me again?"

Zack was not compliant. "Clearly, I did see you again."

"Where does your mother live?"

"Michigan; why?"

"I suppose that is alright, then."

"It's alright that she lives in Michigan?"

"It's alright that you talk to her," Nothos clarified. "Just leave out the content of our conversations."

"I will respect your privacy," Zack assured him.

* * *

_Author's Note: 'Secret in the Soil' was not their most recent case; Zack just felt like talking about it this time._


	5. Isolation

Chapter 5: Isolation

"_Nature abhors a vacuum." _

"I notice you always come and go alone."

"I am friends with the people I work with," Zack said, unconcerned.

"You care about them?"

He nodded. "Yes. And they were quite happy to see me when I returned from Iraq. Dr. Brennan assured me that that was why they were staring at me."

"But they don't come out to eat with you, anything like that?"

"Occasionally. We celebrate birthdays, when I got my doctorate. Events like that. Usually I spend time with them at work, or on my way to and from there."

"Do they spend time with each other outside of work?"

Zack nodded. "Certainly. Hodgins and Angela are dating. Really, they're engaged, so they spend as much time together as possible. They were supposed to be married, but it didn't work because bigamy is illegal in this country. Dr. Brennan spends a great deal of time with Agent Booth. I am not sure if that is outside of work or not, because they work outside of work. They used to take me with them, but now that I am no longer Dr. Brennan's assistant, I don't know what happens when they are not in the lab. I have no idea what Dr. Saroyan does when she is not at work. I don't think she would tell me if I asked her. She does not spend her time with me, though, I know that."

"So, they all have people they spend time with. Other friends they like better than you?"

"Hodgins is my best friend. He asked me to be best man at his wedding. He does not want me to leave the apartment over his garage."

"And yet he spends all his free time with Angela?"

"Yes. He is crazy about her, and she is crazy about him. Neither of them is actually crazy; they just talk like that."

"They don't invite you along with them?"

"No. That would be…extremely uncomfortable. Even at work, they are very…personal."

"So really, Angela is his best friend."

Zack's face scrunched up in confusion. "Can girlfriends and best friends be the same person?"

Nothos nodded. "People often say they married their best friend."

"Then I suppose Angela is Hodgins' best friend. I am not sure if he is Angela's best friend, though. Her best friend is Dr. Brennan, and I don't think she would allow a relationship with a man to alter that. She holds friendship with her female friends sacrosanct."

"Do you even know what that means?" the other man asked in amusement.

"It means it cannot be altered," Zack answered with a straight face.

"And your friendships, are they sacrosanct?"

"Why would I want to alter them?" Zack asked.

"Well, people move on, find new interests…"

Zack shook his head. "No, I care about my friends. I would not stop being friends with them."

"And they would not stop being friends with you either?"

Zack said _No _immediately, but it was rather quiet, and he hunched his shoulders. He had suddenly realized why he missed Hodgins even though they still saw each other at work all the time. Hodgins was best friends with Angela, not him. How had he not known that? How had he not noticed that his best friend had…moved on, developed new interests? Hodgins still treated him the same, mostly. He still gave him rides back and forth to work, most of the time, unless he was spending the night at Angela's. He talked with him in the lab. But he didn't eat lunch with him anymore. All of his free time was given to…Angela.

He took a deep breath to reassure himself. "Dr. Saroyan and Dr. Brennan value me. They are always working to teach me new things, and they value my input to the team. They have both expressed to me my unique worth. They will not…move on."

"So who did your work while you were away?"

"I am not...irreplacable. They hired an African American man to do my job. Temporarily."

"Dr. Brennan has always taught you, always taken you along with her to see how she works?"

"Yes. Well, not all the time. Not anymore. I only go along if she needs another forensic anthropologist, so usually not on the FBI cases anymore. She assesses the body in the field, and then sends the remains back to the Jeffersonian where I can analyze it."

"Who goes along with her on the FBI cases?"

"No one. She can take care of those herself. Just Agent Booth is with her. For…moral support. He can't do anything with the body, so I'm not really sure what else he is there for. Interpretation, maybe? He is good at giving orders. He drags her away to cases all the time."

"So she would rather have moral support than a trained forensic anthropologist?"

"Yes." Again, the face squinched up after he said that. He had not considered this before. Hodgins spent his time with Angela, not him. Dr. Brennan spent her time with Agent Booth…not him. "But like I said, Dr. Saroyan always works with me in the lab."

"Yes. She just never spends time with you outside of the lab."

"Well, she does come along when we..."

"I meant, just you."

"No, she doesn't."

It was very strange to suddenly realize that he had no friends. What was even more strange was that he hadn't noticed it before. He supposed it was because he still cared for them in the same way he always had. It was simply their attitudes towards him that had changed. He would have to work on that. His mother always told him that if you want to make friends, you have to be a friend. He tried to explain to her at the time that he didn't really know what that meant, and could she please give more specific, step by step instructions? But surely now he would do better? He had gleaned specific details over the years that he could now implement. Maybe if he shared a little bit of his personal life at work, he'd be able to reconnect. Maybe it was all his fault, for failure to assimilate, even at the Jeffersonian, the one place he'd thought of as his home. Maybe he had been too complacent, to think he could leave for three months, and come home to find everything was just as he'd left it. Of course they moved on in his absense. That was only natural.

Aloud, he said, "Well, at least you eat meals with me outside of work."

Nothos smiled at him, and patted his shoulder reassuringly.

* * *

_Author's Note: Sorry for the lack of setting in this one. I felt it needed to be a disembodied conversation. The tangible world will return next chapter (with a vengeance!) Zack discussed the possibility of moving out of Hodgins garage into a new apartment in "The Secret in the Soil." _


	6. Paradigm Shift

Chapter 6: Paradigm Shift

"_An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." _

Zack shook his head. "You cannot prove a hypothetical. By its very nature, prevention means that an event does not happen. But a correlation between an action and an outcome does not imply a cause and effect relationship. In the absence of experimental evidence, the effectiveness of such actions can definitely be called into question."

"There is historical evidence that secret societies disrupt the lives of normal people, creating a reign of terror and destruction and death. These groups form at the intersection of political and religious power. Do you really find that not to be enough evidence?"

Zack's brow creased. "It lacks experimental rigor. You are supposing continuity between different members of the same organization, positing that membership in that organization will result in similar outcomes. But identity among the individuals is flawed, because countless variables are introduced."

Nothos nodded. "These organizations groom people, make them into who they want them to be. If someone does not cooperate, they are removed from the ranks. Just look at all the people who left the Jesuits in the 70s."

They stood in Zack's apartment, over Hodgins' garage. Nothos had come by without warning, which surprised Zack. He said he was just picking up the DVD. Zack had not offered him a seat, nor made any move to sit down himself. But Zack was not used to visitors. Hodgins picked him up and dropped him off after work, but did not come inside. He had not brought a girl back to his apartment since he returned from Iraq. He had asked Naomi to the Halloween party at the Jeffersonian, but she had not spoken to him since he failed to show up. Apparently, preventing child murder was not a suitable excuse for standing up a date. It seemed incongruous to see someone else standing in his space. He had dutifully fetched the DVD case and handed it over, but his guest had started a conversation about the movie. So, they stood just inside the doorway and talked.

"But not every Freemason is Jack the Ripper. Otherwise, we would have even more cases than we already do." Zack had watched _From Hell_ as recommended, but was still not convinced. "The forensic evidence on that case was very subpar. It was 1888. There is no proof that that man was really…"

"The killings stopped abruptly, didn't they?"

"Yes, but – "

"Someone caught the killer and silenced him. Someone who knew of his connections with the Freemasons and the danger he posed to society. Someone _stopped_ him."

"But that is what I do. My work involves studying the evidence, which leads to a killer, so that we can stop him. Or her," he added as an afterthought.

"After the fact," Nothos dismissed him. "You are merely cleaning up messes."

Zack looked crestfallen. "But there is no preventative. Punitive measures are all that are available to us."

"Not to me."

"What do you mean?" Somehow, the conversation had ceased being theoretical; they were no longer discussing the movie.

"I told you, I study people. You study bones because they are the tangible, fixed part of a person and they reveal secrets that the living would not share. Am I right?"

Zack nodded. "But how did you know that? I haven't told anyone why I went into this field since my brothers asked."

"I know, because I study the living. I serve a higher purpose. So…"

Zack put his hand up to signal him to stop talking. "That is meaningless to me. I've been considering Erdos' probabilistic method to approach this problem, but I can't see how the Chernoff bound can be used to introduce sufficient certainty. How certain do you have to be before you take a man's life? 95%? 99? 99.999? No matter how many iterations are used, you never reach a probability of one. There is always a non-zero probability that no murder would occur, no matter how many members I posit in the group in question nor how many years I allow the scenario to run. And even if the existence of a murderer were certain, his identity is out of reach by nonconstructive methods. It is mathematically impossible to prove guilt in an individual prior to the commission of a crime."

Nothos smiled through his frustration. "I can see you've thought about this a great deal, but you are looking at it from the wrong angle. Jack the Ripper was real. The crimes do occur, and I know who is guilty. You are demanding certainty, when justification is sufficient. The good of the many outweighs the good of the few. You've said in the past that there is no harm in harming a bad guy. How is this any different?"

"I'm not comfortable with your assertion of knowing. _How_ you know is not clear to me. Please, explicate your process."

"No, I shouldn't say any more about this now."

"Why not?" Zack looked at him in dismay. He was intently interested in this conversation.

"What I was going to say…it's not safe."

"That's why you were so insistent that our communication be anonymous and untraceable? That is why you are private?" Zack felt that was not entirely fair. After all, Nothos had his e-mail, his phone number. He knew where he worked and where he lived. Zack hadn't even told him his address; he found that out on his own. Though he supposed looking up Hodgins wasn't _that_ difficult.

"Yes. I share this information with the wrong person, and it can be…dangerous."

"I am very trustworthy." Zach knew he was quoting Dr. Brennan. He wasn't really all that trustworthy; at least no one else thought of him that way. He was honest, and he was reliable – _he_ considered those traits to be trustworthy. "What is the indication of criminal activity, murderers, within a secret society?" _The good of the many outweighs the good of the few...or of the one...but.... _

"What does a boy grow up to become?" Nothos countered.

"A man." Zack was fairly confident he got that question right! But he did not see how it was relevant, either.

"And how does a boy learn to be a man?"

"From…other men?" Zack wasn't entirely sure he had learned this lesson yet.

"Yes, particularly his father. Now, what happens when a boy does not have a father?"

"That is biologically impossible. Every child must have a father, and in particular, a boy would not be male without a contribution from a Y chromosome. It would literally be inconceivable to have a boy without a father. In fact, the word _inconceivable _refers to a situation that cannot happen, such as the conception of a child without…"

Nothos waved him off. "Yes, of course, they must start with one. But not every boy has a father."

"Oh. True. He could be absent due to death or divorce or delinquency."

Nothos gave him a strange look but still nodded. "Yes. So, what does a boy without a father grow up to become?"

"A…man?" Zack didn't understand how this was any different from the first question.

The other man shook his head. "No, he has no father to teach him to be a man."

"Couldn't he learn from…other men? I don't ask my father every question about advice on being a man. Sometimes I ask Agent Booth or Hodgins or my older brothers." He paused. "Even my younger brother-in-law, though I probably won't do that again. Or you," he added, almost as an afterthought.

"But who raises this boy?"

"His mother, obviously, unless he is an orphan. In that case, he would have to rely on the generosity of other relatives or the foster care system. I am assured that the foster care system is a poor substitute for real parents."

"Leave aside orphans for a moment. I want to focus on a boy raised by his mother, and _only_ his mother. What will he grow into?"

"Not a man?" Zack somehow knew that wasn't the answer.

A slow nod. "A monster."

"I know who you are." Freemasons. Widow's sons. Murder. His growing suspicions clicked into place. "You are Gormogon."

The man pinned him to the wall. Zack let out a yelp. Perhaps it was unwise to have said that? It had happened very quickly; what did he do now? He realized his heart was pounding rapidly against the man's arm. He was taller than Gormogon, but that thought did not reduce his heartrate.

"Where did you learn that name?"

"The vault. We have the artifacts. We identified the symbols…."

"You will never speak that name again. You are not worthy, nor do you understand what it means."

"It is a riddle…," he began, and then stopped. "But I will not speak about it."

Nothos removed his arm. Zack was shaking. His thoughts were jumbled. It was not like him not to assess the situation quickly and arrive at an answer. He had played the murder victim many times before, and it had never had this strong of a physiological effect on him. He looked over the man's shoulder. "Are you going to kill me?" he asked.

"Why would I? You are not a threat to society. You are not one of the ones out there harming people. I only target those who _need _to be destroyed."

"_Gormogon. They started out as one of the good guys." _Hodgins had told him that, the day they had learned about the Gormogon iconography.

"How are you any different from the secret societies you target?" he asked.

"We have strict standards in place. We never allow our society to grow. Each man may train one successor…and only one. It keeps us pure in our intentions – always, we work to build a better society. These societies, and the people in them, are a disease. I identify the worst offenders, and remove them."

Zack nodded, but he was still puzzled. "I don't understand how you can be…sure."

"I've seen the way you stare at the silver skeleton."

Zack's mouth hung open. "But…you've never been in the Jeffersonian. It's impossible for you to have seen me in the vault."

"But you cannot deny it. I can read people. I _know. _The question is, are you willing to help me?"

"Help you in what way?" Zack asked, curious in spite of himself. He was oddly relieved that his flesh was not going to be boiled and then gnawed off his bones. "I…I am very talented with bones."

"There is a skeleton we're both interested in. I think you can help me with that."

* * *

_Author's Note: Zack is a math genius. I may be good at math, but I'm not on his level; my engineering degree is a bachelor's. I did my best to make the techno-babble accurate, but...it may not be. There aren't really any spoilers for "From Hell" in this; the movie does offer one of the more entertaining conspiracy theories on the identity of Jack the Ripper, though! Zack is familiar with the logic of "the good of the many outweighs the good of the few or of the one" from watching Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. _


	7. Aftermath

_Warning: Serious spoilers for "Knight on the Grid." You shouldn't be reading this story if you haven't watched Season 3 anyway, but I thought I would put in a specific warning for this chapter. Also, I should mention that this story contains spoilers for the season 4 episode "Perfect Pieces in the Purple Pond" starting...now. Also, if you haven't figured out by now, this story contains frank discussions of murder and cannibalism. No worse than the show, but usually one warns for those things. _

Chapter 7: Aftermath

"_A wicked companion invites us all to hell."_

It was dark outside. Zack waited impatiently. Nothos had promised he would stop by tonight. He worked late at the Jeffersonian, because Dr. Saroyan was there, but he got back in plenty of time. Hodgins and Angela were "out" and would not be back for some time. He had a lot of questions. At first, everything had been fine. As soon as he saw the body, he knew who it was, what had happened. It had been great to feel so…clever. After all, it was much easier to interpret the data when you already knew which conclusion you would reach. He identified the murder weapon in record time, and knew that the man had not been "kneecapped" right away. The easiest _King of the Lab_ moment ever!

He had hoped to gain some insight into the process of killing a person through his association with Nothos, but it had not worked out that way. He did not seem willing to share those details, and, as always, only the parts _he_ chose to share were discussed. Zack did not feel left out, exactly. After all, he had explained the importance of catching the Monsignor while he was still on sabbatical - because that was a key indicator of a shift in intentions. If they were going to prevent him from carrying out any murderous plans, they would have to strike before the year was out. Zack had finally realized that even if the man was technically innocent, his death was still important because it would prevent the deaths of other innocents. Better that one man should die for the sake of the people. That was even in the Bible; maybe the priest would appreciate that. Zack knew all about _why, _but he was still interested in _how._ But Nothos reserved that part of the plan for his...true apprentice.

Zack did not know what to think about that. It was like finding out that Hodgins was best friends with Angela. It was...unexpected. He had to admit that, from a practical standpoint, it made sense for Nothos to preserve the continuity of the Gormogons by acquiring a new apprentice. But...he was surprised Nothos had not asked him. He was helping him, wasn't he? He found out when Nothos showed up without any teeth. He had gaped at him, and asked what happened...only to find out that the _apprentice_ had pulled them all for him with a pair of pliers. He said it was just some kid he was training, but Zack knew then that he was not the only person Nothos talked to about these things. Maybe he discussed the plans for killing the priest with this apprentice.

But it did not end there. He learned more about Gormogon after working this case. He learned how the man knew things about him; he'd been watching. Zack was very proud of himself for figuring this out the old way - on his own, without any help from the man they were investigating. It was a heady experience, having _both _avenues open to him. He'd thought that would gain him some respect, both at work and from Nothos. It did not work out that way, though. Dr. Brennan had dismissed him when he agreed with Agent Booth about Dr. Sweets, and now Nothos had acted without informing him of his plans. His own "secret knowledge" did not extend to foreseeing what would happen when he effectively delivered not only the silver skeleton, but also Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan to his friend. Zack was agitated. He wanted explanations.

But there were no answers waiting for him in his apartment. He glanced at the shelf in the pantry; packets of Ramen, canned tuna and spaghettios didn't seem that appetizing. He paced back and forth a few times, but that didn't help. He knew that Hodgins did pushups when he was agitated, so he decided to try that. Focusing on breathing was not enough to distract his mind.

Finally, he heard the motorcycle outside.

"Why did you blow up Dr. Brennan?" he asked, as soon as the door opened.

"Good evening, Zack. Aren't you going to ask about the Corrupter first?"

"No. You will tell me whether or not you got him anyway. I want to know why you targeted Dr. Brennan. She's not even male!"

"Have you eaten yet?"

"Why does whether or not I've eaten have any relevance to the question of why you targeted Dr. Brennan?"

"It doesn't. But if you hadn't eaten, I thought we might sit down and discuss this while you ate."

"Oh. No, I'm not hungry. Just tell me!"

Zack had no idea why he was so upset, but he knew that something was wrong. It was an awful, sick feeling - an unwelcome surprise. It was like....suddenly, he remembered sitting in a courtroom, listening to a man completely demolish Dr. Brennan's reputation. He had been in shock that her professor, who should know better, who claimed to...to like her...would do something like that. It was wrong. It was...a betrayal.

"You betrayed me," he said in surprise, the hurt evident in his voice, and the confusion written on his face. "How could you go after Dr. Brennan like that?"

"What did you think would happen? She's trying to stop me, isn't she?"

Zack shook his head. "No, you don't understand. If I explained it to her, she wouldn't..."

"You are not permitted to speak about this!"

"Yes, I know, but she wouldn't try to stop you if she knew. You didn't have to...to blow her up!"

"I will _not_ permit her to stop my work. One person cannot stand in the way...It's bad enough she has the skeleton..."

"Why didn't you take it back? I let them know you were listening, so you had a chance..."

"But you miscalculated. The FBI does not just _let_ anyone take something like that. The truck was heavily guarded. If anyone is going to speak of betrayal...." Nothos stared at him pointedly.

Zack looked back blankly. "What?"

"You told them about my camera."

"True, but why is that relevant?"

"You aren't supposed to tell them things that make it easier for them to stop me! That was why I had to target them. They were too close."

Zack drooped. "This was my fault?" he asked quietly.

"I won't hold it against you. You are a beginner, and some mistakes are to be expected. Just don't let it happen again."

Zack looked up and shook his head earnestly. "No, it won't! I won't let her stop you. She lets me analyze the remains more and more, while her attention is focused in the field. I won't let her find anything that will lead her to you."

The man Zack had come to trust looked at him skeptically. "Are you sure? Are you sure you can do that?"

Zack nodded. "Yes, I'm sure. You won't have to stop them. Please, just don't...don't try to hurt them again. I would warn you if you were in any danger."

"So, do you want to hear about the Corrupter, then?"

"Yes, please," Zack asked meekly. This conversation hadn't gone at all how he had expected.

"I didn't get him. He got away. Your..._friend_...the FBI agent interrupted before I could finish. He is still out there, and now he's forewarned. He'll probably move to a safe house and be impossible to find."

That was discouraging. Letting murderers get away was bad enough, but letting men who planned to commit murder get away was even worse. He tried to remember how Agent Booth had known who Gormogon's next victim would be, but he couldn't pinpoint who had given it away.

"The day was not a total waste," Zack offered tentatively. "We found your Master's skeleton, and I'm studying it now."

"Oh? What have you learned from that?"

"It is very odd looking at a composite skeleton - the parts don't fit together, giving it a very...surreal effect. I'm not good at describing it, though."

"It's like looking at a piece of artwork, rather than human remains."

"Ehhh..." Zack held his shoulders awkwardly and pressed his lips together. "I can't describe artwork, either. I know what it looks like, of course, but that's not what people mean by it. Angela's an artist, though, and she said that's what it was. She also said it was terrible," he added.

"Terrible?" He seemed...offended, Zack guessed. "It's a complete human skeleton!"

"I agree with her. I prefer skeletons where the parts add up to a whole. The incongruities introduced when you combine over thirty different bodies is..." His face scrunched up. "Terrible."

* * *

_Author's Note:_ I don't like this chapter. I'm not sure why. But I won't be offended if you tell me why you don't like it either ;).


	8. Irrevocable Step

Chapter 8: Irrevocable Step

_"A wise man associating with the vicious becomes an idiot; a dog traveling with good men becomes a rational being."_

"You cannot see Arthur Graves again. The FBI is monitoring his visitors."

"How…how do you know about him?"

"I told you, we found his skeleton. Didn't you see me get the key from the vault? When I was trying to find out if our corrupt lobbyist had gone into hiding, it came up that any visitors to the nursing home would be monitored by the FBI. I wouldn't worry about visiting him. They say he has Alzheimer's, though I'd suspect they did not consider prion disease when they made that diagnosis. Did you ever observe him to eat any part of the brain or spinal column, or did he limit himself to muscle tissue?"

Nothos studied him intently. "You will come with me tonight."

"Come with you…where?" Zack asked, confused.

"You'll see," Nothos said with a smile, which looked different with the false teeth. He then tied a blindfold across Zack's eyes.

"How will I see if I'm blindfolded?" Zack asked, confused.

Nothos did not clarify; he took Zack's wrist and deftly twisted it behind him, handcuffing him. "Ow," Zack complained.

He put a hand on his shoulder and repeated, "Come with me."

Zack surmised that Nothos drove a van, because he was made to climb into the back. He got in and sat quietly, nervous not to have a seatbelt. He was used to being in the back of the vehicle; Hodgins always let Angela sit in the front seat if she were with them. Agent Booth had never let him sit in the front seat, regardless. But at least they let him _have_ a seat.

Zack preferred airplanes to cars. He hoped that one day, you'd be able to take an airplane everywhere. He knew it wasn't entirely practical in cities, with their high congestion and building density. Cars seemed to be such an inferior substitute, though. No lift, no banking, their course was limited by the path and contours of the road. He felt the van pull out of Hodgins driveway, and turn left. They reached the end of the street, just as they did every morning on the way to work. The driver was silent, and he did not turn on the radio, so Zack devoted all of his attention to following the path of the van. He was supposed to see even while blindfolded, so he did his best.

There was a crunch as the tires of the van struck gravel, and then shortly afterwards, the van stopped. The driver side door slammed; the rear door was opened. Two years ago, Zack would have announced aloud the time and estimated mileage he had kept, but he had learned to be silent since then. He only offered up such information when he was asked. He did not complain about how uncomfortable the handcuffs were, either.

"Come with me," Nothos said again. He led Zack around to the back of the house by a hand on his upper arm, then removed the blindfold and handcuffs.

Zack rubbed his wrists, then followed him down the steps to a basement. "What is this place?" he asked.

"It's mine," Nothos said. He unlocked the door and slipped inside. It was dark, and the space was confined. It smelled like a kitchen, and was warm, too. The passageway opened up into a well-lit room.

Zack stumbled in the doorway, and his mouth fell open. He froze.

Nothos gestured with a sweep of his arm. "This place is mine. It is here that you will learn what it means to be a Gormogon."

Zack was not listening to him. He was staring at the dead boy strung up against the back wall, arms pointed upwards. The angle of the wrists suggested he did not restrain himself; from this distance, Zack could not tell if he were strung up pre-mortem or post-mortem.

Gormogon followed his gaze. "My late Apprentice, the Sacrifice," he said by way of introductions. He walked to the back, and picked up something that was next to the body.

Zack had come down into the room. "Why am I here?" he asked tentatively. His voice wavered a bit.

"You are here to learn. You will learn what it means to be Gormogon, to continue the legacy." The dish he was carrying contained blood drained from the victim after his death. Zack recognized the smell of it. He was familiar with blood, though he did not like it so…fresh. "Unbutton your shirt."

Confused, Zack obeyed. Gormogon dipped his hand into the blood and smeared it on Zack's chest. As soon as he touched him, two things happened – Zack shut his mouth, and he realized the blood was warm. He did not deal with warm bodies. He started shaking.

"I...can't," he said, pleading with Gormogon to understand. It wasn't that he didn't want to....

"You'll let him die in vain?" Gormogon asked, pointing at the dead boy with his thumb. He didn't even look at him. "He was expendable, but I killed him for you. So you could take his place. Isn't that what you wanted?"

Zack took a step back. "I'll help you. I've always said I'll help you. I...I admire what you do, and I want to learn more about..." He looked up. He wasn't supposed to say _Gormogon_ in front of him.... "your...society? But I want to wash this blood off of me."

Gormogon tilted his head to the side and considered him. "Just as I thought. We have a lot of work to do with you. No matter." He turned and walked away. Zack did not follow him. "Well?"

Zack did not respond.

"If you are going to be my Apprentice, then you will address me as Master."

Zack walked over towards his Master. He studiously avoided looking at the dead boy. _Focus on the details._

"How did you keep the blood fluid, Master?" he asked, dabbing at his chest gingerly. "You've been gone too long; it should have coagulated by now...oh." Zack saw that the dish the blood was in had been sitting in what was essentially a hot water bath. Rivulets of blood mingled with water trickled down Zack's chest and stained the waistband of his pants. Would he be able to wash it out?

"Let's begin, shall we?"

* * *

Zack climbed into the back seat of Hodgins' car the next morning. He did not say a word to his friend. "Get much sleep last night?" Angela asked. Zack assumed she was addressing him, so he just shook his head.

"You watched it, didn't you? I told you not to watch that alone," Hodgins admonished. "_The Exorcist_ was on TV last night," he said by way of explanation to Angela.

She wrinkled up her nose. "Ewww. You should never watch horror movies alone. You should invite a girl over, and then hold her when she gets scared."

"Very good advice," Hodgins said in approval.

"If I had invited you over last night, would you have come?" Zack asked, curious.

"I said a girl, Zack, not me. If I'm going to hold anyone during a horror movie, it's this guy." She was dismissive. Oh.

"Find your own woman, man. This one's all mine." Zack didn't like when Hodgins looked at Angela while driving, but he had learned not to say anything. At least the car was stopped at the moment. He resolutely looked out the window.

"_'All mine'_? A bit possessive, aren't we?"

"Only as much as I'm yours, baby."

"That's what we should do. We should find Zack a girlfriend," Angela went on after the light turned green. "It's just wrong for people to not have anyone to share horror movies with."

"I could just not watch horror movies," Zack offered. Obviously, he hadn't, so the immediate need for a girlfriend was a moot point. Considering what was in his sink at that very moment, it was a good thing there were no prospects of bringing home a girl. He did not feel comfortable being misleading, but it was better that they assume he was afraid of a movie. He certainly didn't want to discuss what he had_ actually_ done the night before. Hodgins turned on NPR, and that was the end of the conversation.

* * *

_Author's Note: I apologize for the fade to black. Whatever you're imagining is more traumatic than what I would have written, I'm sure. It was great to finally see Zack again in the finale! _


	9. Perigee and Apogee

Chapter 9: Perigee and Apogee

"_A wicked man's gift hath a touch of his master."_

Zack opened his door wordlessly to the knock. The Master followed him into his apartment, and sat down at the kitchen table. Zack did not sit down, nor look at him. He stared at a point on the wall.

"Why did you want to see me? What was so urgent?" The Master's voice was almost the same as before the dentures. There was a very faint lisp. Zack took it as a sign that his work was not perfect. He had failed…again.

"Agent Booth is dead." He said it tonelessly, as if he were announcing the weather. But his eyes revealed the anguish that went into that statement. "I…I was there. I called 911, and gave them the precise location. I stayed on the phone. But it was too late. He must have bled out in the ambulance. I am almost certain he was still breathing when they took him away. I didn't think it was a sucking wound."

The Master did not say anything, but just looked at him.

"Why are you staring at me?" Zack asked.

"This must be very difficult for you."

"It is very difficult for Dr. Brennan," Zack said hurriedly, uncomfortable discussing his own reaction. "I don't know what to do. She taught me that focusing on details helps to compartmentalize the pain, but I do not know if it will work in this case. Over and over again, I see him standing, getting shot, then falling. I focus on the details, but it doesn't help. He's still Agent Booth. I cannot refer to him as the victim. I cannot forget that I know him."

"You need something else to focus on, something else beyond the details of Agent Booth's death."

Zack nodded. "But focusing on _why_ is of no use, either. I don't know why. The woman who shot him is dead, so we can't ask her why. She was a suspect in a murder investigation, but we cleared her. We identified the murderer, and it wasn't her. I am certain of that. So why would she come after Agent Booth after we went to so much effort to prove it wasn't her?" He shook his head. "I can answer other questions, but I do not like _why._"

"Tell me, what do you know of Agent Booth's family?"

"Not very much. He doesn't talk about them often. Dr. Saroyan says he has a brother."

"His parents, are they living?"

Zack shrugged. "I don't know. I suppose I will find out at the funeral."

"So his father may have predeceased him?"

Zack looked up in alarm. "No! You…you can't add him to the skeleton. He's to be buried whole."

"But surely you see my interest. I know he has killed men. Had he lived, he would have killed more."

Zack shook his head. "He only killed bad guys who deserved it. Like you. He was one of the good guys. I told you about the last person he shot - the serial killer who made mummies out of teenage girls at an amusement park? He stopped him in time; he saved the girl. His job is _exactly _what your job is. He always scoffed at secret societies; he would not have joined one. You wouldn't want me to add _your_ bones to a skeleton, would you?"

"No, Zack, of course not. I'm sorry." He paused. "Did he have any children?"

"A son, Parker. He is the only member of Agent Booth's family I've met."

"So Parker is now a widow's son?"

Zack was not alarmed this time. "No, he's illegitimate. Agent Booth did not marry his mother, so she is not a widow. Besides, he's only 5; his bones are much too small."

"I might have something for you to focus on."

Zack did not react.

"I think you are ready. Now might be the time for you to set some things in motion. It will help to protect Dr. Brennan."

Zack looked up, interested.

"As long as the Masterpiece remains at the Jeffersonian, your coworkers face a threat. Removing it will remove them from danger. No more of them need die."

Zack's hopeful look faded. "But there are security cameras. Even if I were to alter them, they'd discover when the skeleton was removed and trace the doctored tapes back to me. And it is too big to remove discretely. The guards would discover the theft before I could leave the building." He'd seen what happened when people tried to steal stuff; it usually ended badly. He'd been nervous taking the canines from Limbo, even though there were no cameras down there and no security guard had ever asked him to turn out his pockets in the 3 years he'd worked there. They had looked in his bag, occasionally. But he couldn't fit the silver skeleton in his pockets, and there were lots of cameras around the vault.

"I've thought of a way around that. You said that security would discover the theft and the doctored tapes. What if…what if they were distracted?"

Zack considered that. "In the event of an emergency, security personnel would focus on securing the area and in the case of a biological or chemical contamination, containing the hazard. Standing guard over the vault in the basement would not be the priority."

"You could orchestrate just such a distraction, couldn't you?"

Zack looked puzzled for a moment. "How would stealing something else, to distract them from the vault, help me steal the skeleton?"

"No, not a theft. A distraction. You'd have help."

Zack nodded. "I have access to a wide variety of hazardous materials. A biological hazard would be more difficult to implement at a precise time – the air filtration system would pick up on the particles immediately, and set off the alarms. Anything dangerous enough to trip the alarms would be dangerous enough to incapacitate many of the people working in the building, unless I could find something to generate a false positive. And we do not store materials of that sort; I would have to smuggle them in."

"So a chemical accident, then?"

"It would not be an accident if I planned it," Zack corrected automatically. The Master had been unable to break him of this habit. "I could orchestrate a chemical hazard that would set off the alarms and capture the attention of the guards. But it would be suspicious if I were to go to the vault during that time."

"I think I can manage to get in and take the Masterpiece if you keep them distracted."

"I could make you a fake ID badge. They aren't difficult to replicate. But you would want to avoid the main entrance; someone would see you. You cannot exit carrying the skeleton by a path that anyone would see you."

"Is there an out-of-the-way door, near the vault?"

"Yes, the service entrance would be best."

"You've thought about how to sneak into the building before, haven't you?"

"Many times," Zack stated matter-of-factly. "But I never thought I would be using those plans for something like this."

They worked out the details of the plan, and determined how much time it would take to set it all in motion. The Master allowed Zack to plan the details and steps of the diversion, knowing he knew his coworkers and workplace best. It was kinda exciting, like coming up with a secret mission. They settled on the day of Agent Booth's funeral to put the plan into action.

"See, you just needed something to focus on," the Master said as he was leaving.

Zack looked at him sincerely. "Thank you."

* * *

_Author's Note: The chapter title refers to the orbit of a satelite - the points when the moon is nearest and furthest away from the Earth, respectively. Obviously, this chapter takes place immediately following 'Wannabe in the Weeds', during the infamous two week gap before 'Pain in the Heart.' I needn't warn you about what comes next...._


	10. Zenith and Nadir

Chapter 10: Zenith and Nadir

"_A wicked companion invites us all to hell."_

It was true; plotting a secret mission _did_ distract Zack from Agent Booth's death.

Not like smuggling out the canines to make the dentures. That was…private. Just a little project he was doing that happened to be a bit…sneaky. He knew there were no security cameras down there, and that no one would miss the canines for a long, long time. So, he was at his leisure to put a few small bones in his backpack, take them home, and wait until he had a good collection. It didn't involve anyone else. It was a more challenging project than you'd think, because canines weren't meant to fit in the rest of your mouth. He had to select the specimens carefully, and place and file them so that they would fit together. But once he'd been satisfied, he'd borrowed some supplies from work and cast the dentures himself. He thought Dr. Brennan would be impressed with his work, but of course he couldn't show it to her.

His Master had seemed quite pleased with his handiwork, and he'd basked in the praise. He knew he was good, of course, but it was nice to hear it from someone else.

Then Agent Booth got shot, and everything fell apart.

Dr. Brennan retreated into her own projects and wouldn't talk with him unless it was about work. Which, actually, he enjoyed, and she was around more now that there were no FBI cases for them. But…she was not happy, and he was worried about her. He was especially worried about what would happen if he didn't get the silver skeleton back for the Master. Zack didn't want him to come after Dr. Brennan and try to get the skeleton back by himself.

So, it was his job to smuggle the skeleton out of the Jeffersonian. Or rather, create the distraction and security breach so that the Master could smuggle out the skeleton without harming anyone on the team. That was a worthy project, and it kept him occupied running calculations and planning how it would work. The human element always made things trickier for Zack. Luckily, there was an established procedure for emergency situations.

Using the Master's case as bait seemed the only chance. Dr. Saroyan would never let him and Hodgins try one of their experiments just to confirm the cause of death of a WWI soldier. He'd considered using a false indicator of virulent influenza to set off the alarms, but he wasn't entirely sure that would work. And it was rather doubtful that anyone would believe that a skeleton that had been in storage for nearly a century would suddenly be a biological hazard, not if they weren't cutting open the bones. And what reason would he have to do that?

So, cannibalism it was.

Making the dentures had given him the idea for the diversion, too. After all, it was the type of experiment he would be given permission for, it would involve heat, and simply switching out the ingredients could create the needed distraction. He rather enjoyed the idea of an explosion that would catch Hodgins by surprise. He'd probably think it was the coolest thing ever afterwards.

He really didn't want to think about Agent Booth's funeral, so choosing that day had made a lot of sense (though it was the Master's idea). He'd brought the package of evidence to work with him in his backpack, and just waited for an opportune time to deliver it to Dr. Brennan inconspicuously. Before the funeral wouldn't happen; she was way too…focused. Like…like Percival, he supposed, though he was still not used to making these mythic connections in his daily life.

In the end, he left the package on the table right before they left, and assumed she would notice it when they returned.

But then…Agent Booth was _alive_. Dr. Brennan was very distracted by this fact, and Zack was still puzzled on how that could have happened himself. Where had he been for the past two weeks?

But he still had his plan to distract everyone, so when Dr. Brennan was ignoring him in favor of berating Agent Booth, Zack gave the package to her. He couldn't keep the knowing smile off his face, but no one commented on that. Once everyone had seen the jawbone inside, he quickly moved on to the denture proposition, which predictably excited Hodgins, and they got Dr. Saroyan to approve the project.

What he had not counted on was Hodgins' obstinacy. He had to do it; he couldn't let Hodgins, because Hodgins didn't know about the switched ingredients and the imminent explosion. He would be too careless. But of course Hodgins didn't want to be left out; he wanted to be King of the Lab. Allowing him to stand so close, not behind the protective barrier…was not wise. As much fun as it had been to calculate the temperature and mass necessary for the explosion, it was more nerve-wracking to actually carry it out.

Especially when the temperature got too hot.

He did it anyway, because…because he had to. His Master would get the silver skeleton. His work could go on. The team would be safe. Getting blown up the last time hadn't hurt too much; Agent Booth had thrown them both behind a table. He was behind a barrier this time, too. And every second he delayed would just make it worse.

So, he poured in the powder he had substituted for the harmless denture polymer.

And for the second time in his life, he got blown up.

But this time, it hurt. A lot. His hands were on fire.

* * *

_Author's Note: _Apparently, you can thank Dr. Gregory House for this story being completed. I watched season 4 of house and suddenly started thinking about Zack again.


	11. Disarticulated

Chapter 11: Disarticulated

_"The first step to health is to know that we are sick." _

Zack didn't like the pain meds. They gave him weird dreams. At least, he suspected that it was the medication, not the pain, that was causing the dreams.

He was in a predicament. He was trapped in the hospital. His hands were useless. And the team was working as hard as they could to find out what had caused the explosion. Hodgins looked really guilty about it, as if he thought that if he had only insisted, it wouldn't be Zack in the hospital bed. He wanted to tell him it wasn't his fault. He wasn't going to confess to everything, just enough to relieve his friend's anxiety. He'd learned to be judicious with sharing the truth in the past few months. But…he fell asleep.

When he woke up, he still had a visitor, but it wasn't Hodgins anymore. They all came by: Angela, Hodgins, Dr. Saroyan, Dr. Sweets, Dr. Brennan, even Agent Booth. He was confused. He never saw them like this outside of work. The Master had been wrong; they still were his friends. The Master wasn't supposed to make mistakes about human relationships. At least he had succeeded. The Master got the skeleton. The team would be safe. They could keep hunting down bad guys, and the Master could keep hunting down bad guys, and everyone would be happy.

Except for Zack. His hands hurt. And Dr. Brennan would know what he had done.

He knew there was a good chance he would never work again. He was…an invalid. That wasn't the intended outcome. He was supposed to get blown up, not maimed. He had miscalculated the risk. He had made a larger explosion than intended. He might even have done permanent damage to the lab. It was a costly mistake.

Dr. Saroyan was attempting to read math to him. Clearly, she was not fluent in this language. But, he could understand what she was trying to say, and he let it distract him. Math wasn't supposed to lead to errors. If you got the math right, you were right. He'd calculated the explosion correctly. The math hadn't betrayed him. It was the timing. Human error. Imperfect implementation. A robot would have done as programmed and put the precise amount in at the precise time and correct temperature. No error.

But Zack was not a robot. He stopped to talk to Hodgins. He waited for Hodgins to move back. He had failed. Like the Master's lisp with the imperfect dentures.

When Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan came to talk to him together, he knew they knew. There was nowhere left for him to go. He had run out of time to escape, to rejoin the Master and disappear forever.

But he did not want to go to jail. Hodgins had used that as an example of an environment where Zack would _not_ do well. They'd been talking about the young man who had killed a man with a pitchfork and buried him in a compost pile. Zack had suggested that someone like that would only get worse in jail. Hodgins had pointed out that he'd do better in jail than Zack would. Zack had never really thought about going to jail before. Of course, the criminals they caught went to jail, if Agent Booth or Dr. Brennan didn't shoot them first. But…he'd never done anything really criminal before. Just some slight bending of the rules, mostly because Hodgins said it was more fun.

But looking at Agent Booth, he knew he was guilty. He was looking at Zack like a criminal. He was talking to him like one, too. Zack shrank back from his accusations, dredging up the arguments he'd prepared for the situation in which he would be confronted. But as he tried to explain to Dr. Brennan, he realized his logic was more flawed than he had thought. He'd never tried to voice it out loud before, so he'd never had anyone around to critique it for him.

And that was the final blow. He hadn't even gotten that much right. He was wrong…about everything.

The Master wasn't really helping society and chasing bad guys the way the FBI was. The Master, Nothos, had been using him all along. His real friends were here, at the Jeffersonian.

But 'here' wasn't the Jeffersonian. It was a hospital. And questioning. And jail. And…he had lost everything. Zack saw how upset Dr. Brennan was, and something inside him twisted. It was horrible. Not like the pain in his hands…it was…a different kind of pain. In his heart.

And he cried.

But despite the pain, his brain kept working. The game was up. There was no use in hiding anything any more. He didn't really have that much secret or meaningful information, but what he had…he should tell Agent Booth. Agent Booth was sometimes an idiot (like when he pretended to be dead and didn't tell them he was fine), but he was a good guy. Zack had no doubt of that. Nothos…was not.

He had been afraid Nothos would kill Agent Booth. He was not afraid of the thought that Agent Booth might kill Nothos. So he told him what he knew and watched Booth leave purposefully to go hunt down…Gormogon. The serial killer the FBI wanted to catch, who had been so careful not to tell Zack his name or where he lived because he was hiding from the authorities. Because he was a criminal.

Zack was a criminal, too. He had blown up the lab. He had told Gormogon information the team knew. Because of him, the lobbyist was dead. Maybe because of him, the other apprentice was dead, too. Maybe Gormogon had killed him just to recruit Zack. Of course, the other apprentice was a murderer, so he probably deserved to die. He had stabbed the lobbyist in the chest. Gormogon had told him that (though he didn't call him 'the lobbyist' – he called him 'The Corrupter'). The team knew that someone had stabbed him, too. But only the FBI knew where the lobbyist was living. Gormogon hadn't known that…until Zack told him.

Zack had killed the lobbyist.

So he was a murderer, too. He deserved to have blown-up hands that didn't work. He deserved to go to jail and be horribly out of place. He deserved never to see his friends at the Jeffersonian again.

But they gathered outside his hospital room anyway. They looked so lost and far away out there. He didn't know why they were here, but it hurt that they would all leave, all go back to the Jeffersonian… without him.

He answered all the questions that were put to him, precisely and honestly. He knew that he would be charged with murder. He knew that his friends would have to testify against him in court. He knew they would hate doing that. They never let Zack testify; they said that putting him on the stand would only let the murderers walk. But at his own trial…he would take the stand, and that would put the murderer in jail.

Maybe they would make him testify against Gormogon, too? If so, would he be putting him away or letting him walk? Zack didn't know. But he had seen the man eating parts of dead bodies, so you'd think that would be relevant to help convict him. He'd seen the dead apprentice, and could identify him. If Agent Booth found the house, there would be plenty of evidence there that Gormogon was a killer. Maybe they wouldn't even need his help to testify.

But in the end, Gormogon was dead, so there would be no trial. Agent Booth shot him. Or, well, someone on Agent Booth's SWAT team did. He supposed it was Agent Booth, but the imprecise language of 'We got him' didn't really tell him that.

And when they tried to explain to him what '_non compis mentis_' meant (he _knew_ what the words meant), he immediately protested that his mind worked perfectly fine.

"It's my hands that don't function any more, not my brain," he told them earnestly.

But it turned out that when people suspected something was wrong with your brain, they didn't trust you or take your word for it any more. So if Dr. Sweets said he was impaired, then that counted. At least it meant his friends wouldn't have to testify against him in court. And he wouldn't have to go to jail, though…it was almost like going to jail. He'd have to stay there, and wouldn't be allowed to leave. He thought that was the purpose of jail, too. But an accessory before the fact can be punished just the same as a murderer; he knew that much about DC law. If he had just helped Gormogon, but not helped him kill anyone, that would be different. But he had helped him kill the lobbyist. The lobbyist was dead because of him. So, pleading incompetent wasn't too bad.

He had been rather incompetent, after all. He got blown up and lost his job and friends forever.

And even with the pain meds, his hands hurt.


	12. Epilogue: Passage of Time

Epilogue: Passage of Time

_"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"_

Time didn't seem so objective these days. While Zack knew that the movement of the hands on the clock was as precise as ever, and his life was even more orderly and scheduled than it had been before, he still experienced the passage of time in a very subjective way.

Visiting hours were short.

The nights were interminably long.

He had never minded being alone before, but here, he was not really alone. There were nurses, orderlies, psychiatrists, other patients, people who cleaned, people who cooked meals, therapists. He was not even sure what all of the different techs _did, _but they worked here. Even locked in his own room, alone, he felt the presence of other people. He could not get away.

That was not entirely true. He could. But he was not supposed to. They expected him to stay in here until they decided he could leave. Dr. Sweets said that would only happen if he were cured of his delusions. Since he did not suffer from delusions, that meant he would never be allowed to leave. A Catch-22. He supposed if he had gone to trial for murder, he would have gotten a life sentence anyway. And this facility was much nicer than a prison. If he had to spend his entire life locked up, he would prefer the loony bin to prison.

He called it the loony bin because that was what Hodgins called it. Dr. Sweets didn't use that name, but he did not insist on correcting Zack's usage, either. The nurses, though, the people who worked here, they would frown or press their lips together when he said that. That signaled disapproval. They referred to this place as a "facility" or a ward, which made little sense, when the official name was McKinley Psychiatric Hospital. Zack didn't mind those words, but what he would not call this place was an institute. The Jeffersonian was an institute. Being here was not being institutionalized. It was the opposite.

There was nothing to do here. He did things – he ate meals, attended physical and occupational therapy for his hands, requested library books. He called his family once a week when he was allowed to use the phone, slowly typing in the code from the phone card they had mailed him. 900 minutes sounded precise, but he could easily spend 900 minutes doing nothing at all – fifteen hours would go by without any acknowledgement from him. Spending those minutes talking to his father or his siblings brought the time into sharp focus. His mother always wanted to talk to him, but she wasn't very good at it. She would break down and cry, then hand the phone to his father. So he mostly talked to his dad.

He had always been so focused on his work, but here there was no work to do. They told him that his therapy was his work now, so he did his best to put effort into that. He always answered all the questions his therapist asked him, did the exercises they assigned him for practice back in his room. But there was nothing to think about while he was doing this. They told him that playing solitaire was good practice, but handling the cards was difficult. He did not have computer access. He could watch TV, but not all day. He had library access, but they did not have a subscription to the _American Journal of Physical Anthropology_. He checked. They informed him that subscriptions to scholarly journals were not in the budget.

He tried to explain the strange movement of time to Hodgins the next time his friend visited.

"Oh, you mean like 'All Summer in a Day'?" Hodgins asked. Zack's confused look prompted him to elaborate. "The short story? By Bradbury?"

"But I am in the loony bin, not on Venus," Zack pointed out.

"So you have read it. Listen, I know you take things literally, but just try this as a metaphor. The one day all year when it does not rain and they can go outside is like the one day each week you call your folks. Right?"

Zack didn't look convinced. "But I can't go outside. I have to stay in here."

Defeated, Hodgins backtracked. "Relativity. The observer influences the event. Time is not independent of your experience of it. Einstein explained it to normal people by saying that if a beautiful woman sits on your lap for an hour, it seems a minute, but if you put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, it seems like an hour."

Zack stared at his gloved hands. "I don't trust Einstein any more. He also said that intellectuals solve problems, but geniuses prevent them," he said quietly.

"Zack…hey…if we could have prevented all of this, we would have…"

Zack shook his head. "No, not you, _me_. I was trying to prevent something; that's why I'm here. Solving cases after the fact wasn't good enough any more. I wanted to…do something."

Hodgins looked away. He could not bear to watch his friend talk about making a cold-blooded decision to murder a man who was (mostly) harmless. He wanted to talk about something else, but there were few things he could bring up without rubbing in how isolated Zack was now.

"Do you want to hear how everyone is doing?" he asked.

Zack nodded, smiling.

"Well, Dr. Brennan's new book came out, did you know that?" Zack nodded again. "So, she's been busy with publicity for that, travelling around the country, doing an interview on TV, that sort of thing. She hasn't missed any cases, though."

"Have you read her book?" Zack asked.

"Nah, not yet. I'll send you a copy, and you can let me know if it's any good, how's that?"

"I do not plan to read it."

Hodgins looked at him in surprise. "Why not, man? I thought you read all her stuff. Not too many fans could claim to be familiar with her technical work."

"I read the books because I like her journal articles, not the other way around," Zack said. "I thought you knew that."

"I was teasing. But, seriously, why don't you want to read it?"

"Because we're all in it. We always are."

Hodgins stopped smiling. "Oh. I guess…I guess that would be difficult." He swallowed.

"I don't mind reading about all of you. But I do not want to see what she will do with me. I find I am having that problem with a lot of books now."

"You have other friends who use a thinly-disguised version of you as a character in their novels?" Hodgins asked skeptically.

"No, the authors do not refer to me intentionally. But their books are still unpleasant to read."

"You've lost me…"

"For instance, I was reading the _Hobbit,_ because apparently people associate children's books with mental illness and stock the library shelves with that rather than professional journals. And I had to stop reading in the first chapter when the protagonist mentioned an interest in stories about the unexpected luck of widow's sons. I have never had that happen before."

"Probably because you've never had a guilty conscience before. Don't worry, it'll…it'll pass. You'll…" He stopped. He could not promise that Zack would get over murdering someone.

"I know I was mistaken. I was wrong. I know better…now," Zack assured him.

"Well, I'll read the book, and let you know if it's okay, how's that sound?" Hodgins promised.

Zack nodded. "That is acceptable. I would hate to tell Dr. Brennan that I did not read her book." After all, it's not like he could say he couldn't find the time.

Hodgins told him what the rest of the team was up to; mostly mundane activities. He was even able to talk about Angela without getting upset. When visiting hours were over, it seemed like no time had passed at all. But Zack knew that however many hours passed until the next time his friend visited, it would seem interminable.

* * *

_Author's Note: _And that...is that. I am sorry for the long delay in posting the ending of this. Finishing stories is not my strong point. Hopefully, this story fills in some of the gaps left by the writers and provides a little bit of closure on Zack's very unfortunate fate. I know the final two chapters are completely introspective; I didn't want to rehash 'The Pain in the Heart'. But at least with this ending, Zack's talking to people again!


End file.
